Catholic
colleges in America are where we want to send our children but do the Catholic
colleges in The United States meet the criteria of being a traditional orthodox
Roman Catholic college in The US.

Does the Catholic college in The US that you are choosing
accept the teaching standards of the Roman Catholic Magisterium ?

Magdalen College is a Catholic
liberal arts college.

A Correct interpretation of Vatican IIat Magdalen College

Elevating
the role of the laity without bringing down the clergy.

An
outgrowth of the Second Vatican Council

Keeping Faith

Magdalen College is a Catholic liberal arts college
located in Warner, NewHampshire. Founded in 1973, the College offers a classical curriculum
taught in Socratic seminar classes. The mission of the College is to
teach young men and women to seek intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual
excellence.

At a Catholic college, students reject mainstream America
- and the mainstream church

By
Naomi Schaefer, 5/25/2003

WARNER,
N.H.- At 7:30 on a cold rainy morning in late April, the chapel at Magdalen
College, a conservative Catholic college located in a prototypical New England
small town, is more than half full. Most of the school's 85 students and
dozen-odd faculty members, wearing coats and ties of muted colors or long
skirts and blouses, sit in silence waiting for Mass to begin. As the lights
come up, two male students begin to lead the congregation in song.

By
the time students line up for breakfast, where their seats are assigned
(differently each day, so as to avoid the formation of cliques), they've made
their beds and tidied their rooms. No desktop clutter or wall decorations are
allowed. Personal telephones or electronics of any kind, except for computers,
are forbidden. Students carry an extra pair of shoes throughout the day, and
change when they walk into a campus building so they don't soil the floors.
That rule is easily enforced, since students do most of the campus cleaning.

''I
thought it was crazy, nuts, and bizarre when I came here,'' says Mark Gillis,
who graduated from Magdalen in 1990 and is now a ''tutor,'' as all professors
at this Great Books- oriented college are known. Gillis, whose parents told him
he could either go to Magdalen or be kicked out of the house, remembers his
reaction to the 10:30 lights-out policy: ''I would lie awake for hours. It was
like detox.'' But one day during the spring of his first year, Gillis recalls,
''I realized I was happy.''

At
a time when the Catholic church has been rocked by scandal, Magdalen is part of
a small but growing conservative Catholic counterculture that is largely
concerned with other issues. Across the country, a dozen or so colleges have
sprung up to cater to a population similar to that of Magdalen-kids from
families who are looking for a traditional religious and secular education in a
strict social environment.

Most
of these schools, from Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., to Thomas
Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., have student bodies numbering in the
hundreds-for now. In Florida, the Domino's Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan, who has
founded a Catholic law school and undergraduate program in Michigan, recently
broke ground on Ave Maria University, which will eventually accommodate 6,000
students.

While
these schools aren't organized in any formal network, families see them as an
alternative to mainstream Catholic universities, where, according to a recent
study by the Cardinal Newman Society, students' attitudes actually become more
lax on issues like abortion and premarital sex by the time they graduate.
Increasingly, such families are also opting out of Catholic school altogether
in favor of homeschooling. Notes Mark Gillis, ''I was one of eight kids. We all
went to 12 years of Catholic grammar schools and high schools and none of us
had the faith when we graduated.''

But
while conservative colleges like Magdalen seem worlds away from ''jelly beans
and belly dancers in Mass'' (as Gillis describes some of the church's
contemporary innovations), in a sense they are just as much an outgrowth of the
Second Vatican Council. Unlike most older, established Catholic colleges run by
religious orders-like Georgetown and Holy Cross-these schools are generally run
by independent lay groups who believe that the holy life is not just for the
clergy.

Magdalen,
for example, was founded in 1974 as a training ground for lay Catholics to
learn how to apply religious teachings to their daily lives. (While the school
does have some major donors, it's supported mainly by tuition, which runs to
just under $14,000 a year with room and board.) Vatican II, Gillis tells me,
calls on everyone to ''be a saint,'' whether he is a doctor, a lawyer, or a
garbageman, as he himself once was.

As
a layperson, Gillis says, ''you can't know less than Father So-and-So, because
you're just as accountable'' to God. At Magdalen, students and faculty alike say
that a correct interpretation of Vatican II would elevate the role of the laity
without bringing down the clergy.

Tutor
Patrick Powers explains that there are three components of a Magdalen
education: the tutorials, the catechetics, and residence life-which correspond
to the ''life of the mind, the life of the spirit, and the formation of
passions. This tripartite structure is ''not unlike the Platonic soul,'' he
notes.

Gillis
sums up the Magdalen experience another way. ''It's good habits. It's character
formation. It's Aristotle.''

In
the classroom, students engage with the great minds of Western civilization,
from Plato and Aristotle to Nietzsche, Freud, and John Paul II. According to
the student handbook, the goal of the first two years of classes is to ''unmask
the opinions of students in order that students may be able to learn and know
the truth.'' After their sophomore year, students must reapply, declaring their
determination to ''live both the truths learned in tutorials and the virtues fostered
in common life.'' For example, in a class called ''The Philosophy of Love,''
students discuss a section from Dante's ''Purgatorio'' that addresses the
relationship between rational and natural love; since the former ought to
control the latter, in the administration's opinion, students are prohibited
from dating.

Focusing
on the Great Books, say faculty members, is made easier by the school's ban on
TV and radio. Reading materials that ''neither reflect nor abide by the
Catholic Church's teachings on social communications''-Cosmopolitan, say, or
''Bridget Jones's Diary''-are also forbidden. ''Here, I don't have students
walking into class with garbage on their minds,'' says Powers.

While
newspapers are permitted, few students pay attention to them. As Powers
explains, ''The whole education here encourages you to suspend interest in
[contemporary] issues for several years.''

Most
students express only a hazy understanding of the details of the pedophilia
scandals that have rocked the church.

''We
really realized what was going on when we went down to the cathedral in
Manchester'' after Bishop John B. McCormack invited them to a town meeting with
the press, says junior Kristen Sticha. ''It was the most incredible feeling of
solidarity because here's the bishop and he was talking to his people,'' she
recalls. ''It was so awesome to be there, supporting him.''

Sticha,
who first came to Magdalen for a high school summer program, tells me, ''I
totally believe in the authority of the Holy Father and that the Catholic
Church isn't a democracy. No matter how many people say Bishop McCormack should
leave because he has made mistakes, it doesn't matter as long as the Holy
Father thinks he should be there. He's our father. It would be like kids saying
we don't want him to be our dad.''

As
Mark Gillis puts it, ''Our faith is not dependent on the vice or virtue of
individuals.''

Nancy
Carlin, a senior at Magdalen, explains, ''People have an infinite capacity for
sin, but we have an amazingly merciful God who allows evil in order to bring
forth the greater good.''

Such
attitudes are a far cry from the Catholic mainstream in the Boston area, where,
according to a recent Globe poll, clear majorities support allowing priests to
marry and the ordination of women, and some 40 percent say they would support
an American church independent of the Vatican. But the isolation and
conservatism of Magdalen is extreme even by the standards of America's
conservative Catholic colleges.

About
an hour south of Magdalen, at Thomas More College in Merrimack, another Great
Books school, students dress casually, are permitted to date, and keep up with
current events as much as any other group of undergrads. Although they come
from large traditional families similar to those of Magdalen students, students
here demonstrate much less subservience to the church hierarchy. The scandals,
says Thomas More freshman Theresa Ellis, ''affected my faith. It made me wonder
about all the priests I know. It made me skeptical.'' Junior Ben Kniaz, who
attends Mass three times a week, says he blames ''some of the bishops in
America,'' and thinks more lay participation in selecting priests may be part
of the solution.

Indeed,
Magdalen president Jeffrey Karls expresses some concern over the potential
isolation of his students. While he supports the school's restrictive policies
on television and radio, he does provide students with a ''leisure guide''
listing movies and books that might be appropriate for them once they graduate.
He also invites local political candidates to speak on campus.

The
school's founding years, Karls says, ''were more focused on making sure
students were prevented from being swallowed up by the culture and its
immorality.'' But now, he says, ''We have to get beyond being fearful.''

Naomi
Schaefer, an adjunct fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is writing
a book on religious colleges.